Dr. Steven Novella

speaker

11,445 appearances 18 recordings 2 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 2d ago

Dr. Steven Novella’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 5.

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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe · The Skeptics Guide #1063 - Nov 22 2025 podcast

In order to bypass this limit, you have to disable genes that can limit the number of times that cells can reproduce. voice-verified

So they wanted to see if they could find naturally occurring, like spontaneous immortality in the cells of a large mammal because this has been previously shown to exist in chickens, but they're not mammals and they're not large. voice-verified

So they said, all right, but they thought, but this can't happen in cows. voice-verified

So the researchers wanted to see if it was possible. voice-verified

So they basically plated the cow cells for 240 cell generations over 18 months just looking for any cells that looked self-renewing, right, any self-renewing colonies emerged. voice-verified

And finally, finally one did. voice-verified

Basically, they proved that there's spontaneous emergence of immortal cell lines in cow cells. voice-verified

They then found out the mechanism was the natural activation of telomerase and PGC1-alpha, so basically extending the telomeres, right? voice-verified

So repairing the telomeres to set back the biological clocks. voice-verified

All right, so that's cool. voice-verified

Obviously, the purpose of this, voice-verified

is for lab-grown meat, right? voice-verified

The big advantage here is one is regulatory because if there's no genetic modification, it bypasses all of the GMO regulation. voice-verified

So that's a big part. voice-verified

They need your fears of Luddites. voice-verified

And also this could make the whole process cheaper, right? voice-verified

So they think now they want to do this with like muscle cells and basically create immortal lines that then you could use to crank out those lab-grown hamburgers. voice-verified

All right. voice-verified

So we'll see if this leads to anything, but that was the purpose for that. voice-verified

All right. voice-verified

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